Monday, 16 June 2014

Guest Post: Some Derivative Adventures in Banking

For awhile now I've been trying to write posts about a couple of different subjects that I just can't get a handle on. It all comes down to high finance - underground or otherwise - and my basic inability to understand it, whether I'm trying to write an archetype adventure post about criminal Factors or a BitCoin related heist story. You're reading a blog belonging to a GM whose players once made 8 million credits introducing naked short selling to the Star Wars universe!

So I reached out to frequent collaborator and VFTE poster Malek77, and just like that he gave me three campaign hooks straight off the top of his head.

I couldn't not post these. Enjoy!

1. The Super Nerd Financial Derivative Attack

By exploiting some incredibly complex mathematical idea and an illegal home made quantum computer, the team have worked out a way to exploit a vCoin trading system.

2. Black Banking

International unlaundered black money transfer. The point of the bank is its inviolable security, and absolute disinterest in its customers actual activities.

A theft would be a massive 'grift' against an organised crime cartel to extract or divert a vast transfer, and 'black launder' the money - not so it becomes 'clean' but so they can't trace where it went!

3. Black Bank Nationalisation

A vBank is ruining some nation's financial system - the government puts in place austerity measures, everyone shifts to trading in untaxable vCoins. The tax office has a heart attack.

In this case, the heist is a professional spook operation to net the actual hardware, and software, the bank runs on.

They want to get into the administration of the bank - SILENTLY - and take over the administrative structure, and then 'subvert it' back to the light side...

Then reveal the take over by annihilating a whole bunch of criminal enterprises.

The ones they don't like, anyway.

Now all I need to do is figure out how the massive grift in 2. might actually work and turn it into an adventure. Or just have the adventure and let the players work it out. They've always managed before!